Thanks again everyone, I appreciate the comments and suggestions. I dropped the temp on these nearly 1000K to give the set more of a cold, wintery feel. I'll go back and adjust them as I continue working the data.

How are the skin tones? Also, do the catchlights look okay? I faked them, as I was only shooting with diffuse overhead sunlight and the eyes looked a bit dead.

NIce set. Flattering balanced facial angles. Non distracting background and similar clothing keeps all the attention on the front of the face even in the low contrast lighting.

Not a real problem in these, more something to watch for and evident in 3 and 4 are eyes beginning to be shaded by brow. It will happen when the subject looks down and if sun is high in sky behind clouds even when subject is standing looking level at horizon.

The problem is the "key" vector of the skylight being blocked by the brow. The solution is first if you want light in the eyes (which is usually the case in a smiling straight at camera shot like the last) first pose the face to the light (as you might by a window or studio light) the move the camera relative to the face to get the desired level, chin up, chin down view. It requires lifting face up, them raising the camera position off the ground so I look for a rock, bench, etc. or for a planned session bring along a light 3 -step stool.

Mind you I'm not saying you need light in the eye in every shot. It works when it matches the mood and expression. In the first three the slightly shaded eyes are in context with the "Are we done yet?" expression. I get the same look from my in-house model most of the time so I understand the body language. But in #4 where she is smiling I'd want the eyes to be "smiling" too with more light in them.

In terms of the color temp and mood?

Eye adapt to color dynamically in person and that's sets up the expectation of what "normal" should look like in a situation like this and what will seem normal will vary with background context and cropping of the shot.

In a H&S portrait without a lot of important background context the viewer is going to focus mostly on the face and expect it to look "normal" and neutral because that's how their eyes would adapt if seeing it in person. So what you might try is two separate layers where the normal subject is masked out of a background you shift cooler.

Something to try next time to see how the context perception shift dynamic works is to shoot wide, medium and close-up shots.

In the wide shot an overall cooler shift, including the subject will seem normal because the shot is mostly background context. But as you crop tighter the same color balance will seem abnormally cool, but less so than here because the wide shot is remembered as context that it's a winter day. But in the close up anything too far from a normal neutral baseline will seem odd because there's little or no background context.

Again that's due to how our brains adapt our perception of color when looking at the wide scene vs. staring at a familiar face. In editing shots where WB isn't noon day neutral I ask myself how my eyes would adapt based on the focal point and background context and often use two-layer mixed WB approach.

austin.grant wrote:
Thanks again everyone, I appreciate the comments and suggestions. I dropped the temp on these nearly 1000K to give the set more of a cold, wintery feel. I'll go back and adjust them as I continue working the data.

maybe the "temp" would have worked better if the background included snow or more of a winter scene